Random Walk Newsletter, Issue 5#
One Sentence#
This time I'll share two sentences, one in Chinese and one in English.
"Creation is not enlightenment, it is labor."
Overthinking often ends as regret.
If you're overthinking, write.
If you're underthinking, read.
Audiobooks & Books#
About Habits
This week I read Random Search - What habits do you plan to develop or quit this year?, which reminded me of two books I had read before, "The Power of Habit" and "Habit Psychology." From these two books, I learned some useful knowledge about habits, such as the key to self-control is not strong will, but establishing stable behavioral patterns, which means developing good habits.
So how can we develop good habits? There is a new understanding here, which is that we should not try to eliminate a bad habit, but rather replace it with another behavior. In fact, habits are neither good nor bad; they are shortcuts we establish to achieve certain benefits. The golden rule for changing a habit is to replace it with another.
Another important influencing factor is the environment. The environment can create friction for bad habits. For example, if you tend to oversleep in the morning, you can place your alarm clock further away so that you have to get up to turn it off. This approach can be applied not only to bad habits but also to developing good habits. For example, many people decorate their desks in a way they like, so that whenever they sit down, they enter a working state.
It's Not My Fault
There is a point in it that inspired me. The way we deal with mistakes has been linked to intelligence since childhood. For example, when praising a child, if they did well, we say "You're really smart" instead of "You worked really hard." If they didn't do well, we might say "Why are you so dumb?" This also leads to the fact that when we make mistakes as adults, our first reaction is to shift the blame, to avoid being seen as having intelligence or personality problems, and that's why we make mistakes.
In fact, we should separate these mistakes from intelligence and personality. A mistake is just a mistake, and it has nothing to do with intelligence or personality. Making a mistake doesn't mean you're stupid or bad. Only by cultivating this concept from an early age can we face our mistakes calmly, face mistakes correctly, and truly learn from them to avoid making the same mistakes again.
Another book talks about this, "The Black Box Thinking." The summary is that we should all approach mistakes in the same way as black boxes do. However, in reality, many industries are not like this. The book mentions the medical industry, which not only lacks black box thinking but is the opposite, unwilling to admit mistakes and avoiding them.
Enlightenment of the Present
From Stephen Pinker's book, the most impressive thing to me is that our world is evolving towards entropy, which means chaos, inefficiency, and unpredictability. How should we face this? Pinker's point of view is to use information to counteract entropy. When all your thinking is based on objective facts, you are using information as a weapon to the fullest extent.
The question this girl should ask is, what should we believe in after humans stop believing in gods?
Pinker's answer is, believe in reason.
Observations & Insights#
- This week I read an article by Liu Run, introducing concepts such as web3, blockchain, and metaverse. It's easy to understand and I recommend everyone to read it, I suggest you read it carefully. You must understand it.
- The February issue of the "Three Strikes Newsletter" is very rich in content. I wish I could write such content someday, Three Strikes.
- I read an article on the Minimalist about memorizing vocabulary. It's not long, but the content is great. Sometimes we work hard, but the method is more important, How to effectively memorize vocabulary?.
To be honest, this week's newsletter was a bit rushed. There were indeed many things going on. I accepted a job adjustment, prepared documents for promotion, and dealt with various miscellaneous matters. I didn't have much time this week. I organized my usual records and composed this newsletter. It's also a way of learning, gradually learning how to better complete an article.